Earlier this summer, several Android OEMs announced that they would no longer be locking their bootloaders. The change in heart was met with cheers from developers and enthusiasts in the community, though wireless carriers weren’t quite so excited about the move. Verizon, for example, tweeted that it would not activate any unlocked devices on its network. Nevertheless, manufacturers like HTC stayed true to their word — though it now turns out there’s a catch in this particular case.

While HTC has announced that it’s ready to take the bolt cutters to your bootloader padlock, but, as in real life, freedom sometimes come at a price. For HTC, that price is your phone’s remaining warranty.

In addition to agreeing to a disclaimer that unlocking your phone “may void all or parts of your warranty,” you’ll also need to download and install the Android SDK, use it to retrieve the identifier token from your device, and then pop that code and your email into HTC’s Web Tool. The Tool then emails you an unlock code for your device, which you then pop into to your Android to initiate the actual unlocking process.

Does the HTC warranty verbiage really mean that you’re out of luck if some random misfortune befalls your beloved handset? Probably not, but it’s likely that president Peter Chou was offering an olive branch to the unhappy carriers — who can use the unlocking process as a way to get themselves out of servicing your modified hardware if they’re so inclined.